The Web of the Rafsanjani Clan
The lives, business interests, and influential connections of the late president's five children.
Overview:The Rafsanjani Children
The late statesman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was both a founder and a victim of the kleptocratic system at the heart of the Islamic Republic. A shrewd strategist who was at once a man of the people and a ruthless elitist, his presidency, from 1989 to 1997, saw the rise of the clannish power networks and corrupt institutions that continue to paralyze Iran’s economy. Rafsanjani unabashedly appointed his close relatives to various positions of power, helped them secure prestigious jobs, and sent them abroad to study; Rafsanjani himself never traveled abroad without several members of his family in tow. He doled out public funds to whomever he pleased: regime officials, his own family members, and the families of known terrorists. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and his wife of almost six decades, Efat Marashi, had five children: Fatemeh (now 60), Mohsen (59), Faezeh (58), Mehdi (51), and Yaser (50). Tehran Bureau takes a look at their lives, their business interests, and their web of influential connections that extend across the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Children of Rasanjani
Mohsen
Yasser
Faezeh
Mehdi
Fatemeh
Mohsen Hashemi
Rafsanjani’s oldest son, Mohsen, holds a degree in mechanical engineering from a Canadian university and was involved in the IRGC missile project for at least four years, based on a September 2011 interview.At the age of 28, while his father was president, Mohsen became the head of the Presidential Office of Inspections, holding this position for eight years. When his father became the head of the Expediency Council, Mohsen became his chief of staff. He also served as Azad University’s construction deputy for four years until, in 2017, he won a seat in the 5th Tehran City Council and became its chairman. Mohsen Hashemi is the head of the central council of the Executives of Construction Party (ECP), founded by former cabinet members and friends of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in 1996. Mohsen is married to Azam Hashempour and has three sons: Emad, Ehsan, and Alireza. Emad is married to Zahra Seyyed Rouhani, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s great-granddaughter. He is CEO of Daftar Nashr Maaref Enqelab (see next page) and recently joined the board of Abnieh Gostar Karafarin, a Karafarin Bank subsidiary. EIKO, the supreme leader’s holding company, is majority shareholder in Karafarin Bank. Alireza and his father have two companies registered in France: Rubis D’Evian (real estate) and Rubis De Maxilly (construction and real estate). Alireza and his uncle Yaser founded another company in France in 2017, SCCV Rubis.
Mohsen Hashemi
Business Interests
Mohsen Hashemi served as CEO and board chairman of Daftar Nashr Maaref Enqelab (aka Office of Publishing Revolution Learnings) from 2004 to 2013. All five of the Rafsanjani children have been involved with this publishing house, which is dedicated to works by and about their father.Mohsen has served on the board of several other companies, including:
Refah Cultural Bonyad
Tehran Metro Station Complexes Development Co
Tehran Metro Company
Tamadon Azad Pars Tourism Development Co.
Iran Rail Association
TUSRO
Yasser Hashemi
The youngest son of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Yaser Hashemi Bahramani, 50, is married to Maryam Salari.1 They have one daughter, Leili, who is married to Mohammad Mahdi Sanei Taheri. Yaser was one of his father’s chiefs of staff at the Expediency Council. After Rafsanjani’s death, Yaser’s office was sealed shut and he was effectively purged from the EC. Yaser was reportedly also chief of staff of Azad University’s board of trustees. Rafsanjani’s archived website states that Yaser was once in the business of cheese imports. According to a 2003 article in Forbes, “Yaser owns a 30-acre horse farm in the super fashionable Lavasan neighborhood of north Tehran, where land goes for over $4 million an acre. Just where did Yaser get his money? A Belgian-educated businessman, he runs a large export-import firm that includes baby food, bottled water and industrial machinery.”
Yasser Hashemi
Companies
Raha Mehr Vatan Charity
Sanati Tolidi Moratab
Tehran Airline(fka Safat Airline)
SCCV Rubis
Faezeh Hashemi
Faezeh, 58, is Rafsanjani’s youngest and most controversial daughter. She is married to Hamid Lahouti Eshkevari and has two children, Hassan and Mona. Hassan lived in the UK and was briefly arrested upon his return to Iran in 2012. Mona is married but not much is known about her husband or her life. Faezeh was rumored to have divorced her husband, though she denied this in an interview published by Jamaran News in 2014. By her account, Faezeh loved to study but was unable to pass the university entrance exam in Iran for several years until she finally gained admittance to Islamic Azad University, which was co-founded by her father in 1982. She holds a doctorate in human rights law from the school. In 1989, early in her father’s first term as president, the Islamic Federation for Women’s Sports was founded and Faezeh, a sports fan, was appointed as its director. Faezeh held this position until 2009, when the sports federation was closed because of her political activities.
Faezeh Hashemi
She now teaches law at the school’s Faculty of Law, which she implies was founded so she would have a teaching position. “We founded the faculty of law on Dr. Jassebi’s order, and I teach courses related to my field of study there.”Faezeh’s husband is connected to several companies, including:
Companies
- Polyethylene Tak Sirjan – founded on April 14, 1991. Hamid Lahouti was on the board of this Kerman-based company as chairman and vice chairman until September 15, 2007, when he was replaced by Abdollah Azimi. Azimi is connected to various other industrial and import-export companies. The company produces plastic bags, polypropylene fibers, and multifilament yarn, according to the business directory website Kompass.
- Sirjan Industrial Foams – Hamid Lahouti was the board chairman of this company, which was established on July 27, 2004. The company makes “all varieties of foam, polypropylene, polyethylene, polystyrene, polyurethane, and parts made from such foams,” in addition to “importing relevant machinery, raw materials, and additives.”
- Sabok Saz Bespar – Hamid Lahouti has been the board chairman of this company since it was established on September 8, 2001. The company produces industrial foam, particularly for use in the auto industry. Members of the Azimi family (see above) are also on the board of this company.
Rafsanjani’s Daughters and the Lahouti Clan
Lahouti Clan
Saeed and Hamid Lahouti’s younger brother Vahid was a member of the Mojahedin e-Khalgh (MEK)—arrested in 1981, he died in custody under suspicious circumstances. Their father was cleric Hassan Lahouti Eshkevari, who was close to Khomeini and accompanied him back to Iran from France. He is seen standing behind Khomeini in the famous picture of the Ayatollah disembarking the plane that brought him to Tehran. Hassan Lahouti went on to become a commander of the Islamic Revolution committees and later briefly the first commander of the IRGC. He was also the MP for Rasht in the first Majles following the Islamic Revolution and the first Rasht Friday prayer leader.In October 1981, Vahid Lahouti was arrested by the pro-Khomeini revolutionaries. Hassan was arrested two days later and died within hours in Evin Prison. In a now archived Shahrvand Emrouz interview5 with Faezeh and Fatemeh Hashemi and Hamid Lahouti, they all deny that Hassan had any involvement with the MEK and state that he died of strychnine poisoning based on the coroner’s official report and not of a heart attack as claimed by IRI media at the time. While then president Rafsanjani looked into the issue “tirelessly,” Fatemeh says her father asked them to “keep silent on the matter for the sake of the Revolution.” Fatemeh says that a few days after her father-in-law’s death they learned that Vahid had also died—when they contacted Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, they were informed that he had been buried ten days previously. “We were told that Vahid died after throwing himself out of his hospital bed.” Faezeh Hashemi says Vahid died of “blunt force trauma to the head.”
Fatemeh Hashemi
Fatemeh, 60, is married to dentist Saeed Lahouti Eshkevari—brother of Faezeh’s husband—and together they have two children, Ali and Sara. She has a degree in political science from Islamic Azad University. Fatemeh was once stricken by a mysterious illness for which she went to Canada for treatment, according to her father’s memoirs. She also sought treatment in the UK. She headed the Iranian Women’s Solidarity Association, a position that enabled her to travel around the globe. She used her father’s position as president to secure funds for her various projects and in obtaining things like a Xerox machine and heaters for her office. Fatemeh founded the Moderation and Development Party in 2001 along with several individuals close to Rafsanjni such as Akbar Torkan, the defense minister in Rafsanjani’s first administration. Hassan Rouhani was the party’s candidate during his successful 2013 and 2016 campaigns for the presidency.
Fatemeh Hashemi
Fatemeh is involved with various health-related foundations and institutions, despite lacking relevant academic credentials:
Companies
- Charity Foundation for Special Diseases (CFSD): She founded this bonyad on May 7, 1991, continues to head it, and is one of its trustees alongside Hossein Marashi (chairman of the board of the Quds Force–controlled Mola al-Movahedin Charity). The charity has at least ten treatment centers in various cities across Iran as well as at least two in Iraq.
- Iran Specific Patients and Transplant Sports Federation: She heads this institution, which was founded on June 19, 2016.
- Soudeh Medical and Treatment Center: Fatemeh was formerly the chairman of this CFSD subsidiary’s board of directors. Hossein Marashi (MMC) is its current board chairman. Baqer Larijani, former Majles speaker Ali Larijani’s brother, has been a board member since at least 2015.
- Institute for Research, Education, and Treatment of Cancer (aka Cancer Research, Training, and Prevention Institute): This institute was founded on July 11, 1998. It falls under the CFSD umbrella and is dedicated to cancer research and treatment as well as helping sufferers and their families to cope with a cancer diagnosis. According to its website, the institute is building a hospital that “will be completed within three years”— there is no indication of when that three-year span began or is supposed to end. Fatemeh Hashemi has been the vice chairman of its board of directors since August 2015. Her uncle Mohammad Hashemi Bahramani, Rafsanjani’s youngest brother, has been its CEO and board chairman since at least 2008. Fatemeh’s cousin Ali Hashemi (Bahramani) is also a former board member.
Mehdi Hashemi
Mehdi is the second of Rafsanjani’s three sons and the fourth of his five children. Mehdi has a master’s-equivalent diploma from the Sharif University of Technology in energy systems engineering. He obtained this diploma via the educational partnership program between the university and the Iranian Fuel Conservation Company (IFCC). At the time, Mehdi was the IFCC’s CEO and vice chairman and evidently gave himself an IFCC scholarship. He then used this diploma to obtain a PhD in energy engineering from Azad University—to which his family had multiple business connections.Mehdi managed his father’s 2005 reelection campaign; the two-time president failed to secure a third term and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the presidency. One year later, Mehdi managed his father’s successful campaign for a seat in the Assembly of Experts. In 2009, following the disputed presidential election, Rafsanjani appointed Mehdi as his representative in the joint election integrity committee. Mehdi was also chief of staff of Azad University’s board of trustees; after he left the country in 2010 the position was given to his brother Yaser. Aside from having served as vice chairman of the Daftar Nashr Maaref Enqelab publishing house, devoted to his father’s legacy, Mehdi was involved at the top levels of two oil and gas firms: Iranian Offshore Engineering and Construction Company (IOEC), from 1993 to 2000; and the IFCC, from 2000 to 2006.
Mehdi Hashemi
In 2000, businessman Houshang Bouzari brought suit in Canada, where he and his family had fled, against Mehdi and the Islamic Republic for “kidnapping, false imprisonment, assault, torture, and death threats.” Bouzari claimed that Mehdi had demanded a $50 million bribe or else his South Pars oil contract would be scrapped. Before the bribe was paid, Mehdi announced that he was creating the IOEC to take over all South Pars oil projects. Attempting to dissuade him and then president Rafsanjani, Bouzari instead landed in Evin Prison, where his interrogators demanded $5 million to let him go. His wife paid $3 million of the ransom and he was released after a few months. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2002.
Crown Prince of the Kleptocracy
Mehdi’s Many Scandals
Mehdi Hashemi
In 2003, Norwegian Statoil was investigated for paying Mehdi $15 million in “consulting fees” to win contracts to develop offshore platforms in South Pars Phases 6, 7, and 8. Statoil executives told Norwegian investigators that the fees were based on a contract that Mehdi said had been used with other multinational oil companies, suggesting that Statoil was not alone. In 2007, Parisian prosecutors launched an investigation into oil giant Total over an alleged $78.6 million bribe paid to Mehdi to win a gas project in South Pars. Mehdi was arrested in 2012 and sentenced to ten years in prison for embezzlement, accepting bribes, and national security crimes in June 2015.
Crown Prince of the Kleptocracy
Mehdi’s Many Scandals
Tehran Bureau, 2022
The Web of the Rafsanjani Clan
Tehran Bureau
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The lives, business interests, and influential connections of the late president's five children
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The Web of the Rafsanjani Clan
The lives, business interests, and influential connections of the late president's five children.
Overview:The Rafsanjani Children
The late statesman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was both a founder and a victim of the kleptocratic system at the heart of the Islamic Republic. A shrewd strategist who was at once a man of the people and a ruthless elitist, his presidency, from 1989 to 1997, saw the rise of the clannish power networks and corrupt institutions that continue to paralyze Iran’s economy. Rafsanjani unabashedly appointed his close relatives to various positions of power, helped them secure prestigious jobs, and sent them abroad to study; Rafsanjani himself never traveled abroad without several members of his family in tow. He doled out public funds to whomever he pleased: regime officials, his own family members, and the families of known terrorists. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and his wife of almost six decades, Efat Marashi, had five children: Fatemeh (now 60), Mohsen (59), Faezeh (58), Mehdi (51), and Yaser (50). Tehran Bureau takes a look at their lives, their business interests, and their web of influential connections that extend across the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Children of Rasanjani
Mohsen
Yasser
Faezeh
Mehdi
Fatemeh
Mohsen Hashemi
Rafsanjani’s oldest son, Mohsen, holds a degree in mechanical engineering from a Canadian university and was involved in the IRGC missile project for at least four years, based on a September 2011 interview.At the age of 28, while his father was president, Mohsen became the head of the Presidential Office of Inspections, holding this position for eight years. When his father became the head of the Expediency Council, Mohsen became his chief of staff. He also served as Azad University’s construction deputy for four years until, in 2017, he won a seat in the 5th Tehran City Council and became its chairman. Mohsen Hashemi is the head of the central council of the Executives of Construction Party (ECP), founded by former cabinet members and friends of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in 1996. Mohsen is married to Azam Hashempour and has three sons: Emad, Ehsan, and Alireza. Emad is married to Zahra Seyyed Rouhani, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s great-granddaughter. He is CEO of Daftar Nashr Maaref Enqelab (see next page) and recently joined the board of Abnieh Gostar Karafarin, a Karafarin Bank subsidiary. EIKO, the supreme leader’s holding company, is majority shareholder in Karafarin Bank. Alireza and his father have two companies registered in France: Rubis D’Evian (real estate) and Rubis De Maxilly (construction and real estate). Alireza and his uncle Yaser founded another company in France in 2017, SCCV Rubis.
Mohsen Hashemi
Business Interests
Mohsen Hashemi served as CEO and board chairman of Daftar Nashr Maaref Enqelab (aka Office of Publishing Revolution Learnings) from 2004 to 2013. All five of the Rafsanjani children have been involved with this publishing house, which is dedicated to works by and about their father.Mohsen has served on the board of several other companies, including:
Refah Cultural Bonyad
Tehran Metro Station Complexes Development Co
Tehran Metro Company
Tamadon Azad Pars Tourism Development Co.
Iran Rail Association
TUSRO
Yasser Hashemi
The youngest son of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Yaser Hashemi Bahramani, 50, is married to Maryam Salari.1 They have one daughter, Leili, who is married to Mohammad Mahdi Sanei Taheri. Yaser was one of his father’s chiefs of staff at the Expediency Council. After Rafsanjani’s death, Yaser’s office was sealed shut and he was effectively purged from the EC. Yaser was reportedly also chief of staff of Azad University’s board of trustees. Rafsanjani’s archived website states that Yaser was once in the business of cheese imports. According to a 2003 article in Forbes, “Yaser owns a 30-acre horse farm in the super fashionable Lavasan neighborhood of north Tehran, where land goes for over $4 million an acre. Just where did Yaser get his money? A Belgian-educated businessman, he runs a large export-import firm that includes baby food, bottled water and industrial machinery.”
Yasser Hashemi
Companies
Raha Mehr Vatan Charity
Sanati Tolidi Moratab
Tehran Airline(fka Safat Airline)
SCCV Rubis
Faezeh Hashemi
Faezeh, 58, is Rafsanjani’s youngest and most controversial daughter. She is married to Hamid Lahouti Eshkevari and has two children, Hassan and Mona. Hassan lived in the UK and was briefly arrested upon his return to Iran in 2012. Mona is married but not much is known about her husband or her life. Faezeh was rumored to have divorced her husband, though she denied this in an interview published by Jamaran News in 2014. By her account, Faezeh loved to study but was unable to pass the university entrance exam in Iran for several years until she finally gained admittance to Islamic Azad University, which was co-founded by her father in 1982. She holds a doctorate in human rights law from the school. In 1989, early in her father’s first term as president, the Islamic Federation for Women’s Sports was founded and Faezeh, a sports fan, was appointed as its director. Faezeh held this position until 2009, when the sports federation was closed because of her political activities.
Faezeh Hashemi
She now teaches law at the school’s Faculty of Law, which she implies was founded so she would have a teaching position. “We founded the faculty of law on Dr. Jassebi’s order, and I teach courses related to my field of study there.”Faezeh’s husband is connected to several companies, including:
Companies
Rafsanjani’s Daughters and the Lahouti Clan
Lahouti Clan
Saeed and Hamid Lahouti’s younger brother Vahid was a member of the Mojahedin e-Khalgh (MEK)—arrested in 1981, he died in custody under suspicious circumstances. Their father was cleric Hassan Lahouti Eshkevari, who was close to Khomeini and accompanied him back to Iran from France. He is seen standing behind Khomeini in the famous picture of the Ayatollah disembarking the plane that brought him to Tehran. Hassan Lahouti went on to become a commander of the Islamic Revolution committees and later briefly the first commander of the IRGC. He was also the MP for Rasht in the first Majles following the Islamic Revolution and the first Rasht Friday prayer leader.In October 1981, Vahid Lahouti was arrested by the pro-Khomeini revolutionaries. Hassan was arrested two days later and died within hours in Evin Prison. In a now archived Shahrvand Emrouz interview5 with Faezeh and Fatemeh Hashemi and Hamid Lahouti, they all deny that Hassan had any involvement with the MEK and state that he died of strychnine poisoning based on the coroner’s official report and not of a heart attack as claimed by IRI media at the time. While then president Rafsanjani looked into the issue “tirelessly,” Fatemeh says her father asked them to “keep silent on the matter for the sake of the Revolution.” Fatemeh says that a few days after her father-in-law’s death they learned that Vahid had also died—when they contacted Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, they were informed that he had been buried ten days previously. “We were told that Vahid died after throwing himself out of his hospital bed.” Faezeh Hashemi says Vahid died of “blunt force trauma to the head.”
Fatemeh Hashemi
Fatemeh, 60, is married to dentist Saeed Lahouti Eshkevari—brother of Faezeh’s husband—and together they have two children, Ali and Sara. She has a degree in political science from Islamic Azad University. Fatemeh was once stricken by a mysterious illness for which she went to Canada for treatment, according to her father’s memoirs. She also sought treatment in the UK. She headed the Iranian Women’s Solidarity Association, a position that enabled her to travel around the globe. She used her father’s position as president to secure funds for her various projects and in obtaining things like a Xerox machine and heaters for her office. Fatemeh founded the Moderation and Development Party in 2001 along with several individuals close to Rafsanjni such as Akbar Torkan, the defense minister in Rafsanjani’s first administration. Hassan Rouhani was the party’s candidate during his successful 2013 and 2016 campaigns for the presidency.
Fatemeh Hashemi
Fatemeh is involved with various health-related foundations and institutions, despite lacking relevant academic credentials:
Companies
Mehdi Hashemi
Mehdi is the second of Rafsanjani’s three sons and the fourth of his five children. Mehdi has a master’s-equivalent diploma from the Sharif University of Technology in energy systems engineering. He obtained this diploma via the educational partnership program between the university and the Iranian Fuel Conservation Company (IFCC). At the time, Mehdi was the IFCC’s CEO and vice chairman and evidently gave himself an IFCC scholarship. He then used this diploma to obtain a PhD in energy engineering from Azad University—to which his family had multiple business connections.Mehdi managed his father’s 2005 reelection campaign; the two-time president failed to secure a third term and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the presidency. One year later, Mehdi managed his father’s successful campaign for a seat in the Assembly of Experts. In 2009, following the disputed presidential election, Rafsanjani appointed Mehdi as his representative in the joint election integrity committee. Mehdi was also chief of staff of Azad University’s board of trustees; after he left the country in 2010 the position was given to his brother Yaser. Aside from having served as vice chairman of the Daftar Nashr Maaref Enqelab publishing house, devoted to his father’s legacy, Mehdi was involved at the top levels of two oil and gas firms: Iranian Offshore Engineering and Construction Company (IOEC), from 1993 to 2000; and the IFCC, from 2000 to 2006.
Mehdi Hashemi
In 2000, businessman Houshang Bouzari brought suit in Canada, where he and his family had fled, against Mehdi and the Islamic Republic for “kidnapping, false imprisonment, assault, torture, and death threats.” Bouzari claimed that Mehdi had demanded a $50 million bribe or else his South Pars oil contract would be scrapped. Before the bribe was paid, Mehdi announced that he was creating the IOEC to take over all South Pars oil projects. Attempting to dissuade him and then president Rafsanjani, Bouzari instead landed in Evin Prison, where his interrogators demanded $5 million to let him go. His wife paid $3 million of the ransom and he was released after a few months. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2002.
Crown Prince of the Kleptocracy
Mehdi’s Many Scandals
Mehdi Hashemi
In 2003, Norwegian Statoil was investigated for paying Mehdi $15 million in “consulting fees” to win contracts to develop offshore platforms in South Pars Phases 6, 7, and 8. Statoil executives told Norwegian investigators that the fees were based on a contract that Mehdi said had been used with other multinational oil companies, suggesting that Statoil was not alone. In 2007, Parisian prosecutors launched an investigation into oil giant Total over an alleged $78.6 million bribe paid to Mehdi to win a gas project in South Pars. Mehdi was arrested in 2012 and sentenced to ten years in prison for embezzlement, accepting bribes, and national security crimes in June 2015.
Crown Prince of the Kleptocracy
Mehdi’s Many Scandals
Tehran Bureau, 2022